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Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Scream Queens: Pilot to Hell Week

Hi everyone! What did you guys think of the premiere episode of Scream Queens?? Judging from my Instagram feed and general air of social media, everyone was pretty taken with the show. I know we were and it only took the opening scene to get us hooked! So I’m not quite sure what kind of direction these write ups will take just yet, but to be on the safe side you should watch the episodes before reading. You’ve been warned.

So, as with MTV’s Scream, we had some initial doubts about this show. I think these mostly came from the fact that the same people who worked on Glee worked in it, so the Impostor was preparing himself for a musical or something similar. I had that thought at the back of my mind too, but hoped for the best. My comfort came from the fact that the original scream queen, Jaime Lee Curtis, approved of the show enough to be in it, and she hasn’t been in a ton of new movies. I didn’t get the “I’ll be in anything you hand me” vibe from her… the one I regularly get from Robert Englund… but that’s a different story. Scream Queens immediately grabbed the Overlook’s attention with its Mean Girls type characters and insane scenario in the opening scene. We were also surprised that they started off the show already killing people! Nobody we knew, but that’s a step in the right direction; they weren’t afraid to kill. And that was only the beginning!

Scream Queens does things a little differently than what we are all used to with the slasher genre; they seem to have reversed a lot of things. Lord Battle picked up on the feeling that all the female characters were ruthless and even a touch misogynistic (especially Dean Munsch and Chanel). These are traits we would generally associate with male characters. Same with the whole physical hazing aspect of the show, it’s usually more of a fraternity thing. The male characters in the show are instead close knit with each other, and are insanely egotistical. Chad, in particular, who just can’t help that everyone wants to sleep with him.

In these first 2 hours, Scream Queens has already made a handful of horror references and homages. The most obvious of these was made by the most fitting person; when Gigi and Wes Gardener drive away in his car, Dean Munsch is revealed to have been lurking in the car’s shadow, ominously observing its passengers. Very much like Michael Myers. A less obvious, more suspected homage was the music selections in this show. The soundtrack consisted of 80’s pop hits for the most part, which can easily be a callback to the great slashers of that decade.

This show knows what it has and how to use it. The casting is genius and simple; put familiar faces in familiar roles. Typecasting in a sense, but it reassures the audience that they will be comfortable with these people in these roles. The writing is funny but also fitting; it reminds me of Scary Movie at times, but it keeps itself grounded. It doesn’t get stupid at any point, and walks the line between slasher and comedy so that it’s accessible to both fandoms. And my god, is it bloody!